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Robert Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University and a fellow of the British Academy in history and economics, is a member of the British House of Lords. The author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, he began his political career in the Labour party, became the Conservative Party’s spokesman for Treasury affairs in the House of Lords, and was eventually forced out of the Conservative Party for his opposition to NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999.

I have often wondered what holds the Soviet empire together after the collapse of communist theory. It seems the answer is "religion, tradition, and paranoid rhetoric". One wonders how long a people who bred Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and a host of others can survive on such a diet.

The "NATO expansion" red herring trotted out yet again.
NATO was formed in 1948 as a response to the Soviet refusal to withdraw from those Eastern European nations it continued to occupy after WW2. The Soviets responded in 1953 with historical chutpah, by designating those occupied nations (East Germany, Poland, Hungary. Czechoslavakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania) members of the Warsaw Pact- supposedly to protect the USSR from "Western Aggression".
Upon the collapse of the Soviet "union" in 1991, all of the Warsaw Pact nations, plus the illegally annexed and occupied Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, not only reasserted their sovereignty, but made a point of joining NATO- to make sure that a re-awakened Russian bear did not return for another round of Russian empire-building.
Blaming the Baltics and the rest of previously occupied Eastern Europe for joining an alliance meant to prevent any resurgent Russian adventurism should be recognized as pragmatic self-preservation, not as an uncalled for provocation. Only those willfully ignorant of history and hard-core Putin apologists endorse the "NATO made me do" it rationalzations used to justify Russian actions In Ukraine. If anything, the illegal annexation of Crimea and the presence of "little green men" in Eastern Ukraine has validated the wisdom of Eastern European nations in aligning themselves with NATO and the West, rather than relying on the tender mercies of the Russian oligarchs and nationalists who now run Russia.
Accusing Eastern European nations of provoking Russia by joining NATO is a "blame the victim" mentality worthy of both Kafka and Orwell.

pot calling the kettle?.. Russia is now better than UK's "best friend" China- which still executes 1000s every year, without fair trial and free media. The labour camps (Laogai) are booming under Emperor Xi.

The US isn't full of monuments memorizing slavery, mass murder of Indians and failed colonial adventures like Iraq. Western Europe is full of monuments remembering all the crimes committed in its colonial empires. Obviously societies have a limited capacity to face their dark sides. So why blame Russia for not being obsessed with the dark side of its past?

How strange to read Robert Skidelsky's obfuscation of Vladimir Putin's political ambitions. Skidelsky writes: "So far, Putin has displayed an accurate sense of limits. He allows Russians to dream of greatness without getting them into serious trouble." So, the annexation of Crimea and then the annexationist invasion, with Russian regular and volunteer troops, and annexationist Ukrainian rebels qualifies as "accurate sense of limits"?

Skidelsky conteds that: "Expanding NATO into the Baltic States in 2002 – the Alliance’s first enlargement into former Soviet territory – was a catastrophic mistake, which made it almost impossible for a Russian to be both patriotic and pro-Western." Humbug! What part of Russia has NATO invaded since the break up of the USSR, and how many of its neighbors that are not members of NATO, has Russia invaded in the last 24 years?

There was never a threat to Russia from the NATO. No NATO country wanted to break up the Russian Federation. The only objection NATO has to Russia is its imperialist aspiration, which Putin uses to create enemies in the minds of his emotional subjects.

Skidelsky obfuscates the reason for Putin's hate of the West. Until the implosion of the Communist Party and the Soviet empire which it ruled, the hostility to the West was justified by Marxist ideology of the struggle of socialism against capitalism. When the Communist Party imploded and Russia reverted back to the stage of primitive accumulation of capital, there was no further ideological reason for hostility to the West. Except for one thing: the fall of CPSU pulled in its wake the break-up of the Soviet Empire. History has shown that every time the rulers of the Kremlin lose a part of their empire, they try to restore it. This was why former satellites and "sovereign" republics of the USSR sought NATO protection, and which explains why Putin "allows Russians to dream of greatness", the greatness of Great Russian Empire.

Note should be taken of the fact that Lord Skidelsky is basically an economists; began his political career with Labour, switched to the Tories where his remit was Treasury affairs and was subsequently ejected therefrom in 1999 due to his opposition to NATO intervention in Kosovo. Explains this ill-informed Putin apologist anti NATO piece of fluff.
Comments below by Olaf Lukk and Roman Serbyn are spot on.

According to Robert Skidelsky many Russians have short memories or they engage in denial as a way of coping with political reality. He wants to illustrate the popular mood in Russia today by recounting his visit to the Stalin-era prison camp, Perm-36, in 1998 as a participant of a seminar on "democracy, self-government, and captitalism" organised for "young post-communist Russians."
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Russia was in chaos. It was a shock for many Russians who knew little of life outside their country and who had to grapple with a fledgling democracy. It was a period of horror for Vladimir Putin and his like-minded. Today they are the ones who want to turn the clock back to the days of authoritarianism.
In 1994 the private Russian human rights organisation Perm-36 set up the Perm-36 Memorial Centre of the History of Political Repression to raise awareness about the USSR's last political camp, in which independent thinkers, nationalists from the Baltic republics and Ukraine, along with Moscow dissidents were imprisoned until the late 1980s. Its main goal was to force people to shake off their indifference and confront a dark chapter of their past - harsh ideological repressions under Stalin - that most Russians would rather ignore. Already in 2001 Director Victor Shmirov noted how important it was to remind people of history, while they were "thirsting again for strong government."
In August 2014 Russia's only fully preserved Soviet-era gulag camp was closed. Since Putin returned to power in 2012 there is a tendency to rehabilitate the Stalin era. In May this year he signed a bill, allowing foreign organisations to be banned from operating in the country.The law allows the authorities to prosecute NGOs and firms designated as "undesirable" on national security grounds. In July this year a Russian court fined Perm-36 for failing to register as a "foreign agent" under the strict Russian law. Local officials seized control of the gulag museum and removed all references to Stalin's crimes.
Yet Skidelsky blames the West for the rise of "Putinism", saying it did not help strengthen Russia's democratisation process and finance its "economic reforms" in the 1990s. Instead it made a "catastrophic mistake" in 2002 by "expanding NATO into the Baltic States in 2002", making it "almost impossible for a Russian to be both patriotic and pro-Western." He also praises Putin for displaying "an accurate sense of limits", by allowing Russians "to dream of greatness without getting them into serious trouble". Victor Shmirov said Putin knew there was "no need for repressions - the people have become obedient".

Russia will become a law based, even liberal democracy, as soon as becoming so will be considered by a critical mass of elites and general population as pro-Russian. This is several generations away, if it ever materializes in the coming centuries. For the foreseeable future the majority of elites and of the general population absolutely prefer the authoritarian state. It is very deeply entrenched in the national psyche, both through 1000 years of fiercely authortarian rule and religion.

You can meet a Russian lawyer, as I did, who has never heard of the Magna Carta of 1215 and who has no clue of the historic significance of it for the development of European (Western) legal civilisation.

The West, particularly America, believed to remain the only superpower after the collapse of Soviet Union. It couldn't achieve it thorough soft power. Then it used hart-power, NATO. It seems to failed again. So America is using different methods to weaken/destabilise Russia. There is no doubt that Russia needs to make improvements on its democracy. We should be critical of it. However the spin-doctors of western democracy can not be convincing as long as they are not critical of the West, which is proud of being the row-model. Guantanamo, treatment of black and killing of 90 people daily bases demonstrating the qualitative feature of democracy.

Russia has achieved a lot in the last 2 to 3 decades. People tend to have very short memories. Putin, and up until today, has been calling the West his partners. The West let him down. The image of him enjoying watching the Sochi winter games, whilst a coup was taking place behind his back in Ukraine with the support of the West, is very serious indeed. Putin was provoked to get into the offensive. He has the highest “True” approval ratings of any world leader today. Side-lining the UN Security Council was a big mistake of this administration (amongst several other mistakes). I hear rumours in DC that Obama is planning a Putin type “Democracy”, by letting Biden stand for election next year, which will give him the chance of standing afterwards for another two terms. The denial and envy could very well be in the US rather than in Russia.